


Just Time

by foreverrhapsody



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 11:54:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverrhapsody/pseuds/foreverrhapsody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A coda to 1x08 They Keep Killing Suzie. What exactly did happen to that stopwatch? Spoilers for all of Season One. I wrote this a LONG time ago and am moving it here to christen my new AO3 account.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Time

Jack glances at the clock, then up at the doorway as the familiar sound of dress shoes approaching fills his mind and he can feel himself start to grin before he means to, before he expects to. He looks up to see Ianto standing in the doorway, standing straight as an arrow, holding that stopwatch in his left hand. The quiet confidence from the morgue still hung around the younger man, a thing that Jack hadn't known he found inordinately sexy.

"Ten minutes." Ianto clicks the top button without seeing it, staring at Jack. "Exactly."

Jack nods wordlessly, standing from his desk chair where he'd been sitting and fidgeting for the last seven and a half minutes.

The trip around his desk seems to take forever, in the crackling electric atmosphere of the cramped office which hadn't been there ten minutes earlier . Through his excitement, Jack wishes his desk wasn't there anymore. Things could get awkward.

"Punctual, aren't we?"

"I try, sir."

At last, he stands on the opposite side of the desk, facing Ianto.

"Everybody gone?" Ianto nods, and Jack wants to laugh, at the absurdity of the situation, but doesn't. It would ruin the mood.

"And I took the opportunity to send the Hub's security camera's on a routine maintenance run, so it'll be down for four or five hours, I suspect."

Jack takes a step forward, leaning into that step, and places a hand on Ianto's chest, right below the knot of his tie. The other hand he places on top of the stopwatch in Ianto's hand, and his fingers curl around it in a gesture that feels far too gentle for what he's sure both of them intended for this little rendezvous.

In the same moment, he takes the stopwatch, peculiar symbol that it is, out of Ianto's open hand and leans forward to kiss him. It's chaste at first, but Jack's grief over the days events and lust take over and before he knows it he's somehow pushed up against his own desk, and he can't tell just who is in control of these frenzied motions, Somehow, he realizes that Ianto needs this also, though Jack can't think of any reason for this that made sense to him.

The sound of some device cracking and shattering against the concrete floor cuts in through the haze of desire, and Ianto pulls away, straining to see the stopwatch that had fallen through Jack's fingers as he put them to better use.

"Leave it, it's just time…" Jack mumbles, caught in the moment as he puts both hands on the side of Ianto's head to draw him back into a kiss. He uses one foot to push what he hopes are the remains of the distracting device under his desk. By the next morning, Jack doesn't even remember it's there.

Later, after Jack's returned from the 1940's, after he's risen from the dead, and after he's disappeared once again, Ianto goes to retrieve the pieces of the time-keeping gadget, the crushed glass and spilled clockwork still where it had been shuffled. He keeps the damaged pieces in his coat pocket for a day just to know they are there, then sends it off to be repaired and returned.


End file.
